Gold Leaf Team Lotus 49T 1968 Tasman 0000671.jpg

From: JIM CLARK: Tribute to a Champion. Dove Publishing Ltd

Sunday April 7 was a grey day in both West Germany and Britain. The Deutschland Trophy race for Formula 2 cars was at Hockenheim, in 1968 a dull little track hewn through pine forest, with two short straights joined by a long curve and a complex of hairpins through a stadium. Its most cherished moment came soon after it opened in 1939, when Mercedes-Benz tried out its 1½ litre W165 cars in secret, before despatching them to triumph in Tripoli.

At Brands Hatch in Kent, the British Racing and Sports Car Club (BRSCC) had persuaded the British Overseas Airways Corporation to put up the money for the BOAC 500, a six hour race for sports cars in which the main interest lay in the new Alan Mann Ford F3L V8 prototypes, resplendent in red and gold, competing against Porsches, older Ford GT40s, Lola-Chevrolets, Ferraris, and a solitary screaming gas turbine Howmet.

At Hockenheim it was raining, so cold that belt-drives for troublesome fuel metering units kept breaking on Lotus Ford-Cosworths. Derek Bell, new to Formula 2, was driving a Brabham and finding conditions difficult. It was the first time dashing fair-haired Bell, up-and-coming works appointee for Ferrari had met Jim Clark, also staying at the Hotel Luxor in Speyer. Bell sat down to tea after Saturday practice with Jim and Graham Hill, "...me wet behind the ears sitting there with two of my greatest heroes. Jimmy told me, 'Don't get too close when you come up to lap me, because my engine is spitting and banging.' I thought, 'This is my idol saying when you come up to lap me. It was difficult to take in." Bell was on Dunlops, superior to the bothersome Firestones on the Lotuses that week-end. He had breakfast with Graham and Jim and drove with them to the track. It was the last he saw of the man whose example he followed and whose reputation was beyond equal. Bell remembered the Lotus mechanics driving up and down the paddock all morning, trying to cure Clark's car's misfiring and remained convinced it was what caused the accident.

"I think Jimmy was having a terrible time. Running alone, battling with a poor car on tyres, which were not working terribly well. I reckon the engine suddenly cut out. He would have automatically applied a touch of opposite lock as the car began to slide - and then the power came back on, the rear end gripped, and the car speared off into the trees."

Clark did not much like Hockenheim. He had said to Graham Hill over dinner: "Anyone who goes off into the trees hasn't got a chance ... " He qualified seventh, behind the blue Matra MS7s of Jean-Pierre Beltoise and Henri Pescarolo, who won on the aggregate of the two heats. The track was still damp for the first. Ford had wanted Clark to drive one of its new prototypes, the recently-completed F3L in the BOAC 500. Stocky Walter Hayes, pipe-smoking, reflective, clever, a former Sunday newspaper editor who joined Ford as Director of Public Affairs encouraged the company to take part in motor racing, fostering Jim Clark's career: "The F3L was to have its debut at Brands, and Jimmy was going to drive it. It was all perfectly clear. Then he rang me up and said 'I can't do it. I know I promised you, but Colin says I've got to go to Hockenheim.' And I said, 'Jimmy, Hockenheim is a Formula 2 race, what are you doing in Formula 2?' 'Well, Colin said he'd promised the sponsors.' Jimmy would ring me up sometimes when he wouldn't talk to Chapman. He sort of hoped things would work out."

Two Mann Fords were entered, one started. There were muddles over drivers. Jack Brabham could not come because he had a fuel contract with Esso so he sent Jochen Rindt instead. Graham Hill and Jim Clark were contracted to Firestone, and the Mann car ran on Goodyears. It was to have been driven by Goodyear-contracted Bruce McLaren and Denny Hulme. In the event McLaren and Mike Spence handled it, starting from the front of the grid between two Porsche 907s.

Dave (Beaky) Sims was Clark's mechanic at Hockenheim and related what a bleak weekend it had been from the start. Besides problems with the fuel metering unit belts, it had been difficult getting the gear ratios right.

It was the second European Formula 2 race of the season. At Barcelona the week before, Sims and his colleague Mike Gregory had been in charge of Clark's and Graham Hill's cars. There Jim qualified his Lotus 48 second fastest, only 0.1sec behind Jackie Stewart's Matra but was rammed from behind on the first lap, by Jacky Ickx. Clark retired, cross, with damaged rear suspension.

Sims: "Was he ever angry! Ickx had got mechanics to put in new brake pads on the grid and they weren't bedded in, so the Ferrari went straight into the back of Jimmy's car at the first hairpin. Graham blew an engine, so we headed for Hockenheim, Mike put a new engine in Graham's car and I put a new rear end on Jimmy's."

During the first heat Clark was in difficulties, and after four laps lay eighth, waving Chris Lambert past in his Brabham. Lambert, soon to die in a crash with Clay Regazzoni at Zandvoort, said he thought there was a problem with Clark's engine. On the long curving run to the outer reaches on lap five, Clark accelerated to about 160mph. The only witness was a German official who described Clark fighting for control before the Lotus plunged sideways into the trees. The impact wrenched the subframe, containing the engine and gearbox, off the main part of the car.

A course marshal came to the Lotus pit in a Porsche. Its driver said to Sims: "Come with me."

"I told him I couldn't, Jimmy was missing and he said, 'Yes, I know. Come with me'." The Porsche took Sims round to the accident, just beyond where the second chicane was built later. The race was still going on. "We got there and I started looking for the car. He pointed into the woods. There was just the monocoque tub lying there. I was only 25 and it was horrific. Like a bad dream. I said: 'Who's taken the engine and gearbox off? Where are they? And then I saw them, yards away. I kept saying 'Where's the driver? Where's Jim Clark?' That was when the guy said, 'I'm sorry to tell you but he's dead.' I couldn't believe it."

"Nobody knew what to do. I radioed back to the pits to tell them to bring Graham in and then he took over. It was Graham who called Chapman, who was away skiing. He dealt with all that awful stuff ..."

Walter Hayes was given the news as the cars lined up at Brands Hatch. "It was one of the very bad moments of my life, standing in the pits at Brands just as the BOAC 500 was going to start and hearing that Jimmy had died." Hayes had persuaded Ford Motor Company to create the Ford-Cosworth DFV engine and among its express purposes, besides giving Ford an exciting new image, was to win the world championship again for Jim Clark. Now he was dead of a broken neck.

Motor racing almost died of a broken heart.

The BOAC 500 was a cheerless affair. As the news filtered in from Hockenheim a generation slowly realised motor racing would never be the same again. It was more than the death of a driver; it was the end of an era. It was more than a squall following a storm. When Jim Clark died the whole climate of motor racing changed.

When the news came through to the Brands Hatch press box, a sensation of incredulity, of incalculable grief descended like a pall. People who had never met Jim Clark felt a profound sense of loss. Those who knew him were stunned into disbelief. The car he died in was one of the first to bear the livery of a sponsor instead of traditional British racing green. Gold Leaf Team Lotus marked the arrival of a new force in motor racing, - big money. The fatal crash reaching the front pages of the world's newspapers showed the contrary side. Sponsors wanted to be associated with winning, not with the sudden death of a hero.

As for the unfortunate F3L Alan Mann sports car (above), it did well in the BOAC 500, taking the lead for most of the first two hours although it gave Bruce McLaren a rough ride on the uneven Brands Hatch surface. When Spence took over it broke a half-shaft and retired. It reappeared at the Nürburgring but crashed heavily injuring Chris Irwin. "It was the only car I ever hated in my life, and the single big mistake I made in motor racing," said Hayes. "Alan Mann said he could do it and it would be cheap, and we thought that we needed to replace the GT40 which had been showing its years. We thought we needed to do it although on reflection we didn't need to. Sports cars were in decline anyway. The GT40 years had been special, like a sort of military campaign. I killed that car out of sheer hatred."